t Sunfish wince and leap forward as
if a spur had raked him. Bud shot again, and thought he saw one horseman
lurch backward. But he could not be sure--they were going at a terrific
pace now, and Sunfish was leaving them farther and farther behind. They
were outclassed, hopelessly out of pistol range, and they must have
known it, for although they held to the chase they fired no more shots.

Then a dog barked, and Bud knew that he was passing a ranch. He could
smell the fresh hay in the stacks, and a moment later he descried the
black hulk of ranch buildings. Sunfish was running easily, his breath
unlabored. Bud stood in the stirrups and looked back. They were still
coming, for he could hear the pound of hoofs.

The ranch was behind him. Clear starlight was all around, and the bulk
of near mountains. The road seemed sandy, yielding beneath the pound
of Sunfish's hoofs. Bud leaned forward again in the saddle, and planned
what he would do when he reached Crater; found time, also, to hope that
Marian had gone back, and had not heard the shooting.

Another dog barked, this time on the right. Bud saw that they were
passing a picket fence. The barking of this dog started another farther
ahead and to the left. Houses so close together could only mean that
he was approaching Crater. Bud began to pull Sunfish down to a more
conventional pace. He did not particularly want to see heads thrust
from windows, and questions shouted to him. The Catrock gang might have
friends up this way. It would be strange, Bud thought, if they hadn't.

He loped along the road grown broader now and smoother. Many houses he
passed, and the mouths of obscure lanes. Dogs ran out at him. Bud slowed
to a walk and turned in the saddle, listening. Away back, where he had
first met the signs of civilization, the dog he had aroused was barking
again, his deep baying blurred by the distance. Bud grinned to himself
and rode on at a walk, speaking now and then to an inquiring dog and
calling him Purp in a tone that soothed.

Crater, he discovered in a cursory patrol of the place, was no more than
an overgrown village. The court-house and jail stood on the main street,
and just beyond was the bank. Bud rode here and there, examining closely
the fronts of various buildings before he concluded that there was only
the one bank in Crater. When he was quite sure of that he chose place
near by the rear of the bank, where one horse and a cow occupied a
comfortable co